London, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday said that he would have withdrawn the appointment of Peter Mandelson as the UK’s Ambassador to the US if he had known Mandelson had not passed security checks.
Starmer made the remarks while addressing the House of Commons to present the timeline of his decision to appoint Mandelson as envoy to the US despite his scandalous links with American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
An embattled Starmer, fighting for his job, was forced to defend the move after it emerged that Mandelson had been given the green light for the diplomatic post despite failing the mandatory security vetting.
While the Opposition has questioned his judgment and accused him of misleading Parliament, the Prime Minister has insisted that he was never made aware of the failed UK Security Vetting .
“If I had known before he took up his post that UKSV recommendation was that developed vetting clearance should be denied, I would not have gone ahead with the appointment,” Starmer told MPs.
The UKSV recommended to the UK Foreign Office that clearance should be denied, but on the following day, officials overruled that to allow for the appointment to stand.
“Many members across the house will find these facts to be incredible. To that, I can only say they are right. It beggars belief that throughout the whole timeline of events, officials in the Foreign Office saw it fit to withhold this information from the most senior ministers in our system of government,” said Starmer.
He said it’s “absolutely unforgivable” that the foreign secretary was advised on, and allowed to sign a statement, without being told that the vetting security agency recommended Mandelson be denied clearance.
“The recommendation in the Peter Mandelson case could and should have been shared with me before he took up his post,” he stressed.
After weeks of battling controversy over what he knew and when about the process, Starmer acknowledged that the “sensitive personal information” provided by appointees being vetted must be protected. However, he expressed his dismay that the appointing minister could not be told of the recommendation by UKSV.
He added: “Indeed, given the seriousness of these issues and the significance of the appointment, I simply don’t accept that Foreign Office officials could not have informed me of UKSV’s recommendations while also maintaining the necessary confidentiality that vetting requires.
“There is no law that stops civil servants sensibly flagging UKSV recommendations, while protecting detailed sensitive vetting information, to allow ministers to make judgments on appointments or explaining matters to Parliament.”
The issue was thrown back into the spotlight last week when it emerged that Lord Mandelson had failed the obligatory security vetting that is carried out for high-profile government appointments. However, it emerged that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office had overridden that intensive scrutiny to greenlight the appointment regardless last year.
The government has blamed Foreign Office officials, with the department’s topmost civil servant, Sir Olly Robbins, being sacked for the blunder.
However, Opposition MPs and some of Starmer’s own Labour Party colleagues have questioned the credibility of the claims that the Prime Minister was made aware of the failed vetting by the UK’s security services only days before.
The issue has continued to plague his government as a Metropolitan Police investigation was launched into further revelations around Mandelson’s ties with the late American sex offender.
While he denied wrongdoing, Mandelson was sacked seven months into his role in Washington and the files related to his appointment process were released by the British government under transparency norms.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
